After days of fierce fighting, Taliban claimed to have captured Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city and the birthplace of the movement, on Friday. “Kandahar has been completely taken over. The Mujahideen arrived in the city’s Martyrs’ Square “According to AFP, a Taliban spokesperson tweeted. Government forces appeared to have withdrawn to a military facility outside the city, according to a resident.
The US had announced just hours before that it would send troops to Kabul to evacuate personnel from the US embassy. 3,000 US troops will be deployed to Kabul in the next 24 to 48 hours, according to the Pentagon, but they will not be used to launch attacks against the Taliban.
“We are further reducing our civilian footprint in Kabul in light of the evolving security situation,” US State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters. “This is not abandonment. This is not an evacuation. This is not the wholesale withdrawal,” he said.
UK defence secretary Ben Wallace said London would send 600 of its troops to evacuate its nationals and “support the relocation of former Afghan staff who risked their lives serving alongside us”.
According to the Associated Press, the Taliban’s biggest prize yet is the capture of Kandahar and Herat. As a result of recent offensives, the group has now taken 12 of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals and continues to press forward.
According to the Associated Press, the Taliban’s biggest prize yet is the capture of Kandahar and Herat. As a result of recent offensives, the group has now taken 12 of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals and continues to press forward.
On Thursday, government forces pulled out of Herat, an ancient silk road city near the Iranian border, and retreated to a district army barracks after being under siege for weeks. “We had to leave the city in order to prevent further destruction,” a senior security source from the city told AFP.
However, a Taliban spokesperson posted on Twitter that “soldiers laid down their arms and joined the Mujahideen”.
On Thursday, the Afghan interior ministry also confirmed the fall of Ghazni, about 150 kilometres from Kabul. “The enemy took control,” the ministry’s spokesperson Mirwais Stanikzai said in a message to the media. He also said that the city’s governor had been arrested by Afghan security forces.
Qala-i-Naw, the capital of Badghis province in the northwest, also fell on Thursday, according to a security source familiar with the situation.
Thousands of Afghans have fled their homes as a result of Taliban attacks, with videos and photographs on social media showing the group’s fighters killing and torturing civilians.
